Play the new Unreal Tournament 4 (in Alpha) today!

14 August 2014

By Wesley "CataclysmZA" Fick

Who’s excited that the PC’s homeground, the arena shooter, is making such a big comeback in 2014? Titanfall brings back the old feels from Quake in a big way and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s enhancements to the gameplay might make it an interesting game to play in some of the super-tight maps that Sledgehammer Games will be making for it. But one of the grandaddies of the arena shooter is currently in development as we speak. There’s a new Unreal Tournament 4 for a new generation of gamers and you can play the pre-pre-pre Alpha version of the game for free. Hit the jump for more.

The pre-Alpha build is a very, very basic form of what’s currently being worked on now. The game has some of the base weapons and maps avaiilable, but it lacks many textures (in fact, probably all of the environmental textures aren’t in place) and the character models and gun textures aren’t up to scratch yet. The audio commentary is also very basic and the gun sounds are still being worked on. This is like what you’d get from a very early but playable early access game, just without the pay-in.

The build was given to a Unreal and Epic forum member who compiled it and is currently still updating the build with some stability and framerate fixes. “raxxy” notes in his build log that all of the content currently in the Alpha is subject to change and is pretty much a placeholder for now. The Alpha has been released with the blessing of Epic because they want your feedback on the game. You can give it to them on the Unreal or Epic forums or inside the #BeyondUnreal Global Gamers IRC channel. Beware, raxxy notes that the game is so early that it’s practically just a pile of debug code. That it works at all is awesome enough, though.

There are servers available to play on, but given Unreal‘s popularity, they’re pretty much packed all the time. The game will be updated to have some hosting capabilities and when the later versions come out you’ll need to manually update the game’s files and maps to play it. Almost like an early access game, there’s also a development board pinned to Trello that allows fans to give Epic some feedback and to also track what trends will be in the game.

Now this is how an early access game should be done. Watch the Youtube video below to see ex-Pro Gamer Johnathan Wendell play a few rounds with some noobs he ran into on a server.

Must agree with most of the comments that were being made on Fatal1ty’s stream at the time – the game does look and feel a bit slow for some reason. That being said it’s nice to see they really are sticking to their promise of a community-driven development.

As for the revival of the arena shooter – there definitely is a lot of promise and hopefully one of the games does manage to establish itself properly. My bet (outside of UT) would be Reflex: http://www.reddit.com/r/reflex/

Things to watch

Important stuff

Contact us

If you'd like to speak to someone about placing an advertisement on this website, email sales@nag.co.za.
Any concerns, complaints, compliments, bug-reports, or general word-speaking with regards to the website can be sent to webmaster@nag.co.za.